


Afterglow

by Unfaithful



Category: Spec Ops: The Line
Genre: Gen, I'm so sorry, Mental Instability, More Hurt Than Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychosis, Suicide, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-07-10 11:30:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6983116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unfaithful/pseuds/Unfaithful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dubai is saved. Konrad is defeated. Walker crawls through the rubble, trying to find his way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Trail

All at once, it's dawn. There's no gentle transition from night into blinding daylight, and the sudden glare burns Walker's eyes. He's lying on what's left of Konrad's bed, in a pile of sand so deep that he might as well be on the floor. It looked more inviting last night, when he was in need of a slightly more dignified place to pass out.

Walker shuts his eyes and tries to turn away from the sun; his neck aches in protest. No good. He's awake and he still has a job to do.

Just standing up is another ordeal. He's pushed body and soul to the breaking point. Part of him wonders how he made it this far. Everything hurts.

He looks down on the city he's saved, at the crumbling walls and shattered buildings draped in the gold and orange of a new day. The ruins are still smouldering from last night's final stand. It was the Damned's last strangled gasp of defiance; Walker can see the smoke from here. Dubai is still burning, but the embers will fade to cold ashes in time. The city might even heal someday. In the distance he can see the storm wall still raging, throwing plumes of dust into the sky. If he listens closely he can almost hear it howling.

Dubai is free of Konrad's tyranny at last and that is all that matters, or so Walker tells himself. The light of dawn reveals Konrad as a desiccated corpse, albeit one who sits on his broken glass balcony like it's an emperor's tomb. It would be a pretty place to spend eternity if it weren't a shattered ruin.

"Are you going to stay dead this time?" asks Walker. It comes out as little more than a croak. His mouth's so dry, it feels like he hasn't had water in days.

Walker waits for a response from the man he'd once admired. But Walker does not, cannot hear the colonel's voice lying to him now. The silence is glorious. It's still a more enlightening conversation than they'd had last night.

It's strange. Walker knows he's won but he can't feel any sense of satisfaction. All he feels is relief, like he's laid down a burden carried past the point of enduring. He's done terrible things to get this far. Terrible, but necessary. He hopes Adams and Lugo understood that before the end. 

He takes a look back at Konrad just to reassure himself that there's no one else here but a dead man in a chair. 

_What a fucking disappointment._

He'd come here for answers. The truth. An explanation. Some kind of justification for the shit he'd put himself and his team through. He'd gotten a lot of empty words and a broken mirror reflecting nothing. Konrad was consumed by his own arrogance and blind to the atrocities he'd committed. He'd all but put a gun to Walker's head and ordered him to execute himself.

Doesn't matter now. Konrad's been dealt with. And Walker's mission isn't over yet.

Konrad hadn't given him a resolution, just a false choice and a coward's way out. It can't be that easy. This won't end with a whimper.

* * *

The Tower's doors open with a creak. At first all he sees is white: sun on sand, sun on glass, the glare burning white like the heart of a star. Walker squints against the light; just looking at it hurts, but right now a little headache is the least of his problems.

Outside, it's even more barren than he remembers. The darkness hid the worst of it and from the top of the tower, it looked too remote to be real. In daylight, the city is nothing but sand, broken walls, and death. The last of the Damned lie half-buried under sand and rubble or exposed to the sky. Walker damned near trips over the bodies as he goes. He'll let the fuckers rot and never shed a tear for the fate they brought on themselves.

The last spot where he'd stood beside Adams is utterly destroyed. Of Adams himself there is no sign. No bullet-riddled body, no distinctively-scarred arm poking out from underneath the rubble. Walker had dared to hope but hadn't really expected to find him. A body, at least, would have meant some closure. Walker tries to take some solace in the fact that if the Damned took Adams down, he made them earn the right.

He almost walks right past them: fresh footprints leading out of the rubble. They're uneven, as if whoever left them was limping or badly hurt. If Walker looks closely he can see droplets of red soaking into the sand. Someone else is out here. Walker blinks and tries to shake it off. He's dreamed up false hope for himself before. When he looks again, though, the tracks are still there. It's like they want him to see them. It's a sign. A message.

It can't be, but it has to be.

Walker's voice disturbs the silence. "Adams? What's your status? Do you copy? Adams?"

There's a crackle in his ear. The words are indistinct at first, but he'd know that voice anywhere.

" -ker? Is that you?" Adams sounds like broken glass: cracked and brittle, with edges sharp enough to cut him to the bone.

* * *

Last night, Adams shoved Walker out of the line of fire and stood alone against the Damned. They'd argued, but Walker doesn't resent him for that. Far from it. Adams stood his ground. He always has. It might be all that's keeping him alive now.

"Where are you?" Walker asks. "Are you hurt?"

"Never been better." Adams is breathing heavily, and Walker hopes it's just exertion. "What about you? Still in one piece? Did you get Konrad?"

"Yeah. I'm fine," says Walker. It's a lie, but he feels a hell of a lot better than he did last night. "And Konrad's dead. I think we won."

A pause. "Was it worth it?"

"It's over, Adams. That's all that matters." Walker's running on fumes. They both are. They've argued enough already, and if they're going to fight again they can do it on the ride out. "Let's get the fuck out of here. We're going home. The civvies are comin' with us."

"You actually have a plan? There's a fuckin' surprise." Sounds like Adams is still pissed at him. Walker wishes he could be surprised. Although, if he's being honest, Walker can't blame him. 

"Look, I got us this far. I just need you to trust me for a little longer," says Walker. "Our mission's not over yet. We can still save these people."

"You mean, what's left of them? How the fuck do you think you're gonna do that? No one's gonna follow you anywhere." Adams chuckles. "They know what we did. We're murderers, Walker. Child-killers. You can't just wipe the blood off and move on. It doesn't wash away that easily."

"They're not going to stay here and die. We can save 'em. There's still time. Besides," says Walker, "They don't have a choice."

"If you say so."

It's a long road back, through the sand that pulls at his feet as if it's trying to drag him down. But he'll take this as a sign. His mission's not a total failure, not yet, not while there's someone who can still be saved. One last search-and-rescue. He'll salvage what he can from this disaster. Walker's armed and ready. It'll have to be enough. 

"Where are you?" asks Walker.

"Just get moving," answers Adams. "We're all headed to the same place, Walker. You'll get there."

* * *

The math is simple. It takes four days to die of dehydration. It's already been a day and a half since Riggs destroyed the city's water supply. Time's in short supply and it's running out fast. He's seen groups of people in the distance; they're headed out, he assumes, now that the Damned are gone or spread too thin to maintain any kind of order. You'd have to be insane to stay behind.

The Radioman's broadcast tower is fucked, to say the least. Walker has no idea how the beacons work, so sending out his own distress signal isn't an option. Lugo would have known how.The thought's there before he can stop himself. 

It's pointless, anyway. There's no way to organize any kind of evacuation now. All that's left is the direct option. Walk up, ask them, and pray for the best. 

It goes about as well as he'd expected.

* * *

He'd hoped that the survivors' desperation would win out over their anger. It hasn't yet.

The remaining refugees scatter when he approaches, or they throw rocks until he gives up and leaves them in peace. They're free of the Damned and now that their common enemy is the sandstorm, they should be Walker's allies. That much is obvious. At least, it's obvious to him. He hadn't counted on a city-wide epidemic of Stockholm Syndrome.

The words they scream at him are unfamiliar but need no translation, as badly as he suddenly wishes Lugo was here to give one. He can make out "Delta", he thinks, and "Yankee", pronounced like curses. These people don't want anything to do with him and that's putting it lightly. He's tempted to stop trying. When they need his help, they'll come to him.

Eventually, it's bullets. He dives behind the nearest crumbling wall, though the closest shot was easily a foot above his head. No need to make it easy on them. Walker survived the Damned 33rd and whoever this is, he's not going to hand them revenge on a silver platter.

One of them has a goddamn gun. Firearms are not a rarity in what Dubai has become. They're everywhere, scattered in the dirt like fallen fruit in an orchard. At first he thinks it might be one of the insurgents or even one of the Damned playing escort, firing warning shots at him. He sneaks a look and no, it can't be. He's shooting to kill, but he's just firing wildly in Walker's general direction and the recoil's throwing his aim off so badly that it's obvious the man has never held a gun before.

It's happening all over again. Walker remembers staring down the lynch mob that killed Lugo, and the way his trigger finger itched as Adams begged him for the order to open fire. 

Right now Walker is one man against a horde that will rend him limb-from-limb, if he lets them. Last time the civilians were unarmed, but desperate and angry. They'd murdered Lugo and then set their sights on the rest of his team. For all Walker knows he's facing some of the people responsible. This time, one's made himself a target. Anyone who fires a weapon at him is the enemy. This isn't even vengeance. It's self-defense.

It should be so easy. But these are desperate people and they don't want him dead, just gone. Walker presses back against the wall and closes his eyes. For a moment he can pretend it's one of the Damned still attacking him out of some misplaced loyalty to Konrad. Just another faceless, nameless target. Walker pulls his weapon up and everything in him aches to turn around and open fire. Every instinct screams at him to pull the trigger. Walker breathes in and holds the hot desert air in his lungs.

The shooting stops. Walker hears the group leaving, trudging through the sand on their journey out of this city. Someone shouts angry words at him. He waits until there's no sound but his own laboured breathing. There's nothing else, not even the wind.

* * *

Adams is not impressed. "So you can go five minutes without murdering someone. You want a fuckin' medal?"

"I'm trying to help. Why can't they see that?" Walker wipes the sweat off. "The Damned can't keep them here anymore. I'm startin' to think these people never wanted to be rescued in the first place."

At least they're fleeing towards the storm wall. If he's herding them in the right direction, maybe that's something. 

"They're getting out of here. Isn't that what we wanted?" asks Adams. "Are you still pissed off because you don't get to play hero? What, you think they're safer with you?"

"Why the fuck not? I've gotta be good for something," snaps Walker.

It stings, though. If anyone crawls out of this hellhole it will be despite him, not because of him. Despite everything he's done, there will be survivors of Dubai. They'll be rescued, if they can even make it that far, but for some reason the thought leaves him hollow. 

Right. They'd rather brave the storm wall and the open desert than stay trapped in here with him. He stopped the Damned and no one even gives a shit. Everyone in this city's desperate, he realizes. Even him. Walker's grasping at straws, trying to convince himself that his mission was not a failure, that there's still something he accomplish here. If he can get Adams out, that might count for something. If Adams lets him.

"I can't fix what happened," says Walker, mostly to himself. "I know. But I deserve a chance to try."

"You think this is all about you? If you really wanted to help, you should've just let them take you the fuck out," says Adams. "They would've done us all a favour."

That's not even an option. Just throw himself to the wolves and end up like Lugo, with a rope around his neck? He can almost feel it biting in now.

"We don't have time for this shit." Walker's head is pounding again. "Where the fuck are you?"

"Just keep going, Walker," Adams says. "That's your answer for everything."


	2. The Survivor

There's sand beneath his feet, on his clothes, stuck to the blood drying on his skin. It's under his fingernails and constantly being blown into his eyes. He tastes sand every time he swallows and every so often he has to cough it out of his lungs. If he weren't still bleeding he'd swear it's in his veins too; cut him open and another sandstorm spills out.

_When_ he gets home, he vows, it's straight into the shower. He'll stay until it washes this whole fucking city off him, until the water runs cold enough to freeze him solid like a block of ice. A shower and a beer or five, that's what's waiting for him on the other side of the storm wall.

* * *

He hears slow footsteps ahead, trudging through the sand. Whoever it is, they're dragging their feet. Walker turns a corner and there he is, clear as day, leaning against a wall to catch his breath.

"Adams?" Walker's voice echoes in the empty street.

No. Walker's mistaken. Must've been the sun in his eyes. It's one of the Damned, hand over a wound in his abdomen, and his eyes go wide when he sees Walker. For a heartbeat he stands frozen like a deer in the headlights.

He's been reckless or he's just too hurt to care. The soldier's making no effort to conceal his tracks. He led Walker right to him. Walker's tempted to drop the asshole where he stands. It'd be like finishing off a wounded animal. This is practically mercy.

The soldier has to fumble a bit to get the gun out of its holster, and it trembles in his hands as he points it at Walker. This an act of habit, not aggression. It's a threat display and nothing more. It's pathetic, and Walker's tempted to put him down right now.

Instead, Walker growls "Drop your fucking weapon." _His_ hands don't shake when he points his gun, and he doesn't stumble as he closes the distance between them.

The soldier complies, his weapon landing in the sand with a muted thump and a spray of dust. "Oh shit," he mumbles, tripping over the words. "Oh fuck. No. No. Walker. You're Captain Walker. We thought you were dead-"

_I'm not that lucky. Neither are you._

"Lieutenant Adams. Where is he?" He presses the gun's barrel into the soldier's forehead, hard enough to leave an indent in his skin.

"What?" The soldier's face is blank for a second until the realization hits him. "Oh, fuck- I didn't kill him. I swear it -"

"I don't fucking care." Safety's off. Walker can cut this short any time he wants to, and the asshole knows it. "Where. Is. He?"

He swallows. "Lieutenant Adams is dead. I've seen his body."

He's lying. He must be. It doesn't make any sense. He's got nothing to gain by provoking Walker, and everything to lose by spewing bullshit like that. 

"Wrong answer. I'm gonna ask you one more time. Where the fuck is Adams?" Walker's trigger finger is itching again. One little twitch could end this. "You must've followed him all the way from the Tower. You're really fucking determined to finish him off. Am I right?"

"Lieutenant Adams is already dead," he says, again. "I swear it. It's already over. I was following orders but there's no one left-" 

Fine. So he thinks he saw Adams die. It doesn't matter. This soldier's still one of the Damned, who'd had Dubai's throat pinned under their collective boot heel, who'd murdered their own and committed God only knew what kind of atrocities on Konrad's orders. They're less than human, every last motherfucking one of them.

"Let me go. Please." He's shaking like a goddamn leaf in the wind. "We thought both of you died at the Tower. We threw everything we had left at you. Killed a lot of our own guys in the process."

"Looks like it wasn't enough," Walker says. "Are you alone out here?"

"I think so," he says. "There's almost no one left. Everyone else scattered, I don't know where the fuck they went-"

"So you're a deserter." Walker's eyes narrow. "Thought you assholes executed deserters." 

"I know." There's desperation in his voice now. "Just let me go. Please. If I make it back, I'll turn myself in. I'll do whatever the fuck you want. I just don't want to die here. Sir." 

This asshole? He's one of the last Damned. Maybe _the_ last. 

But he's right, the war is over. And when Walker looks into the soldier's eyes he sees how badly this man has already been defeated. Sparing him isn't mercy when there's nothing left of him to kill. 

Walker lowers his gun. "Start running," he says. "Now. And consider yourself lucky. If I see you again, I'll fucking kill you. Got it?"

The soldier's legs give out and he drops to his knees. He only has room for the barest flicker of gratitude, a half-gasped "Yes sir, thank you, sir," before he stumbles to his feet and takes off. It's not quite a run. It couldn't be, not wounded as he is, but he's moving at a decent pace. He's out of sight before long, headed for the storm wall. Headed home.

* * *

All clear. It's silent; no distant voices, no sign of anyone. No sign of Adams, other than the voice in his ear. Bereft of guidance he's just wandering at random now, led more by impulse than anything concrete. The streets offer him no clues. Walker's at a dead end, and it feels like the walls are closing in on him. 

"Chasin' ghosts again, Walker?" asks Adams.

"Where are you?" Walker's losing patience. They could be on their way home if Adams would just answer one goddamn question. 

"Why do you keep asking shit you already know?" Adams has no right to sound so affronted. "You abandoned me back at the Tower. You walked right past me. Didn't look back, didn't give a second thought-"

"Bullshit. I checked, there was no one left alive." Walker shuts his eyes. He knows what he saw. "You weren't there."

He can picture, clear as a memory, Adams lying dead in the dust. But he couldn't have seen that. Adams can't be dead.

"You need me to be alive so you can rescue me, huh?" asks Adams. "You failed your fuckin' mission, so you gave yourself a new one. Keep it up, Walker. Maybe one day you'll get it right."

"You're not dead," says Walker. Something in him cracks. This isn't happening. Not again. "Not you too." But he must have known it all along; that voice is the echo of a dead man. 

"You knew I didn't walk out of there," says Adams. "Didn't I make it pretty fuckin' clear that I didn't want to be saved?"

"You sacrificed yourself." It was noble. Honourable. Adams gave himself up for the sake of the mission and stood alone against the Damned.

"I chose death, Walker. And you didn't do a fuckin' thing to stop me."

"I had to stop Konrad." Needed it like his heart needed to beat. "I had to. Everything was his fault. I shot him- Had to shut him up, he was lying to me, he lied all along-"

Walker's breaths come shallow and his heart's racing. This is not this was supposed to go. Everything's crumbling around him. Konrad had called Walker a misguided failure, voiced every doubt that Walker felt but couldn't name. The would-be saviour of a city ruined by his help, too far gone to save in the first place. They were only words. Only words. 

"Konrad was right about everything." And now he's speaking through Adams. "Your mission was doomed from the start. This city was fucked before we got here. All you had to do was admit it."

Dubai was on its last legs. Walker and his team arrived just in time to watch it fall. That's the truth. It has to be. All of this was inevitable, the end result of all Konrad's mistakes. It wasn't Walker's fault.

"These people would've died anyway if we'd left them with the Damned. There was never going to be an evacuation." Walker's arguing with himself and he knows it, but he'll fight anyway. He'll fight. "They still have a chance. We could've saved them, we had to at least _try-_ "

"These people are _dead_. We killed them."

"We did what was necessary," says Walker. The Damned hadn't left them any other options. "We didn't have a choice."

"You had a choice," says Adams, quietly. "You're the only one who did."

"We didn't have a choice!" screams Walker. The empty streets echo his own words back to him.

He's just given his position away to anyone within earshot. He's wasting time and accomplishing nothing.

"You're not Adams." Walker shakes his head. "You're a distraction, and you're not gonna fucking stop me."

The radio. Adams is just a voice. Walker's got no one left to contact, not on this side of the storm wall. What the fuck does he need with a radio?

"Martin? Don't do this," says Adams. There's something else in his voice now, something fragile. "Don't you fuckin' dare. C'mon, man, don't-"

Walker reaches up to his earpiece and has to tug it out, tearing his burned flesh where the plastic has melded with it. His raw skin stings in the hot wind. Hardly the worst thing he's had to endure. 

It's quiet. No one's whispering lies to him anymore. His head feels clearer. There's no sound but the wind.

* * *

The walk's a lot shorter when he isn't being shot at, although he thinks can hear an occasional burst of gunfire in the distance. Other than that, Dubai looks like the ghost town it was supposed to be. It sets him on edge. He's free to take the direct route but it leaves him too exposed. If anyone's lurking in the shadows they could take him out before he knew they were there. Walker keeps seeing movement out of the corner of his eyes, but when he looks there's no one.

He remembers being shot on this corner, firing the bullets that scarred that wall. He runs his hand along the pock-marked stone just to feel something solid under his fingertips. When he pulls away his skin is marked with a crust of ugly rust-brown dried blood. Every bullet hole marks a place where he could have died. 

He was spared, he thinks, by luck or something else. There's a reason he's still alive. There must be.

* * *

Near the edge of the city the winds pick up, pressing against him like a hand on his shoulder. The wind's slowly erasing the fresh tracks before him, the ones leading out through the storm wall. They must've headed along what's left of the E 11. It's a path straight back to Abu Dhabi. The road home. Just a little further and he can leave this nightmare behind him.

He's done this once already, albeit with Adams and Lugo at his side. It wasn't an easy crossing, but they'd made it because they had to. It's only wind. It won't stop him now. He didn't come this far just to give up. He can still save himself.

Walker takes a breath and wades in. Immediately, he's deaf and blind to the world. There is nothing else but the storm, More than anything it's a test of resolve; every step forward is a small victory and if he stumbles, he'll be swept away. He is acutely aware of every grain of sand that tears at his exposed skin as if trying to burrow into the heart of him. It's too late to turn back; it always was.

At first he thinks he's imagining it but no, the winds are easing. He's through. It's like being underwater, breaking the surface while your lungs cry for air. For a heartbeat, it's glorious. He's through. He's free. Then he looks up.

Dubai's skyline lies stretched out before him. Konrad's words echo in his head.

_No one leaves Dubai._

He lost his way in the storms, wandered in circles. That's the only answer. It's not his fault he went astray. He tries again but it's like trying to force his way face-first through a brick wall. The sun is low in the sky before his resolve falters and then sputters out. 

Alone at the edge of the city, Walker drops to his knees. He is so utterly drained that it takes what little strength he has left not to drop face-first onto the sand. This city's taken everything from him and now it won't even let him leave. Walker coughs, weakly, and spits out sand. Frustration isn't new; this suffocating helplessness is. He will not surrender. He can't. He saved this fucking city and now it won't even let him leave.

It's bullshit. He's reading too much into a goddamn sandstorm that does not and _cannot_ hold a personal grudge against him. But he's pretty sure that, at this point, it doesn't matter what he believes. 

Until now he's met his doubts like a wild animal, with claws out and fangs bared. But something's shifted. The growl dies in his throat; there's no fight left in him now. Fine. He'll crawl off and lick his wounds. Walker will not admit he's failed, not while he has enough breath in his lungs to deny it. There's nothing left but him, the searing desert wind, and the city he thought he was meant to save.


	3. The Graves

Adams is waiting for him in the shadow of the Tower. The ravens have been at him; they've been feasting in the aftermath of that final stand, and now they scatter at Walker's approach. Adams lies slumped behind a broken wall, marked all over with bullet holes. The lifeblood oozed out of him long ago. He's been shot to Hell and back, but it's him. Or, rather, it was.

Adams is heavy in his arms. This is the furthest thing from the rescue Walker hoped to give him. But, he thinks, he might manage to not fuck this one up. 

The refugee camp is abandoned. Only dust and shadows greet Walker as he passes. He's half relieved; he feared for what they might have done to Lugo's body. Walker shakes off visions of heads on spikes.

Lugo, at least, is where they'd left him, lying still and pale in the sunlight. Poor kid. He died terrified, Walker thinks. Terrified and waiting for help that came a heartbeat too late. If they'd been faster, they could have saved him. Possibly..

Christ, Lugo looks so _young_.

He sets down Adams and has to close his eyes against the memories that hit him like shards of ice. Celebrating in a shitty bar in Honduras, drunk on something that smelled like a spice rack and went down like a shot of hellfire. Patching himself up in the skies of Afghanistan while Adams flew them away from a mission gone wrong. All those moments will lie buried with him.

Walker's buried friends before, literally and otherwise. He's used to seeing dead bodies. It's part of the job. But there's a sense of unreality when it's someone you knew; it's like looking at a mannequin or a wax doll, some _thing_ that looks like them but which the mind can't accept as human. 

This is so much less than they deserve, but it's all Walker can give them now. It's too late for amends or apologies. He won't leave them under the open sky, at the mercy of storms and scavengers. They won't have proper graves, but wherever Adams and Lugo are now, maybe they'll at least appreciate his intentions. God knows they won't forgive him for anything else.

There was a shovel in the camp; Walker uneasily wonders how many graves this thing has dug already. Here, among the broken columns of what was once a city, there'll be two more.

They're barely even graves, just holes in the sand deep enough to hide a body. He lays Adams and Lugo in the earth and his hands come away stained rust-red. Walker wipes his eyes with the back of his hand; there's too much dust in the air. It's grim work but he'll do it because it's necessary. Because none of them had a choice.

Walker feels oddly disconnected as he watches his squad disappear under one shovelful of sand as a time. They're laid to rest at last, under makeshift crosses assembled from debris. Walker's on his knees.

"This isn't how I wanted to say goodbye," he manages. "But I'm pretty sure none of us are going home. Not the way we'd want to, anyway. Sleep tight, gentlemen. I'll see you again someday."

* * *

He doesn't sleep that night, just hides away until the sun rises. There's no strength left in him. He crawls into an empty corner, out of the wind, just to feel a solid wall against his back. Sunset paints lines of fire on the floor and bright tiger-stripes along his arms. The light fades bit by bit, reluctant to release its hold on the sky. Soon he's left in darkness.

It's an impatient, uneasy sort of quiet that waits for something to fill the spaces between its silence. Walker closes his eyes and listens. It's what he doesn't hear that hurts; there's nothing. No footfalls in the distance, no gunshots breaking the air. No one lurking in the shadows. No one's hunting him tonight. He's alone. All alone, without even a ghost to keep him company.

They're hallucinations, more likely, but he doesn't want to think that. It's almost funny. He'll accept that there's something metaphysically wrong with this city before he'll accept that there's something wrong with him.

If he stays in this city he might never hear another human voice, not a real one. Right now he'd take another lecture, another castigation. Anything. Please.

* * *

Near dawn, he leaves his hollow. Walker grabs the wall and pulls himself to his feet, his touch leaving rust-red stains on the cement. He's still exhausted but he's too on-edge to just sit there motionless, waiting for a sleep that won't come to him.

He's lost, wandering without direction or purpose. He can't surrender but he has nothing left to fight for. For the first time in ages he has no fucking clue how to proceed. The road leads nowhere, but he'll walk it anyway. He doesn't have a choice.

* * *

There's a layer of sand coating the Damned's camp; the city's laying its own burial shroud over them. Soon the sands will hide every trace, lay to rest every memory of what happened here. 

He raids the Damned's supplies. They didn't have much left. Only a few mouthfuls of stale water, but he drinks it gratefully. Enough food to keep one man sated. He can exist here. It won't be survival, not exactly. But he's still alive. He can heal, maybe. And when he's strong enough he'll crawl back through the storm wall, or so he'll keep telling himself.

Walker sheds his armour; it's broken beyond repair, too far gone to protect him from anything anymore. It was only weighing him down but he still feels like he's peeling off his skin. There's clean clothing in the Damned's stores, enough for his purposes.

They're running low on medical supplies but Walker can make do. He bandages the worst of it: the burns, the bullet wounds, the scrapes on his elbows and his knuckles and everywhere else. He can conceal the wounds under gauze and tape, but a thousand tiny aches have made their presence known and there's nothing to be done about the pain besides cover it up with morphine. He'll cope. He's lived through worse. He's on his feet, at least, not bleeding out under the pitiless sun.

When you're in the field, you run on pure adrenaline. You can never realize how badly you're hurting until you stop to take inventory. He knows the truth of that now. Beneath all the bandages there's a man, somewhere. His wounds will heal. The scars will stay forever, memorials to everything he'd rather forget.

* * *

Days pass. Walker sees no signs that anyone else is alive anywhere in the city. Either they've learned how to hide from him, or there is simply no one left. He finds signs of them; campfires burned to ash, makeshift shelters. No bodies. Not at first. Then he starts to find the ones who were unwilling or unable to flee the city. Or too weakened to walk the last few miles. The refugees and the last of the Damned, the ones who would not abandon Dubai even in death.

They're all in shelters, away from the sun. On the increasingly rare occasions when he finds survivors they're lost in delirium, shrivelled husks too far gone to do anything but die before his eyes. Dubai is long past saving and it grows more obvious by the hour. Eventually he only finds desiccated husks; some with their foreheads pressed to the dry ground, others on their knees, hands clasped. More dead lining the streets of Dubai, waiting to be buried by the relentless sand. More victims of-

No. They're victims of Konrad's pride, Riggs' madness. He'll cling to that thought like the thinnest lifeline, dig in and hold on until it tears his hands to bloody shreds. Konrad did it. All of it.

* * *

The city's growing quieter. He hasn't seen another living thing in days, besides the occasional flutter of raven wings in the distance. He thinks he can hear voices on the wind, but that's all.

Once, Dubai's population was over two million. Those who couldn't afford to flee from the storms were left to die, their numbers whittled down by starvation, thirst, desperation, by the callous disregard of those too arrogant to admit their own faults.

Konrad said there were five thousand souls in Dubai on the day Walker and his team arrived. Now there's only one.

* * *

The Tower's like a mausoleum now. Walker feels like a grave robber as he climbs the stairs. It's further up than he remembers but for fuck's sake, he was exhausted and half-dead when he found Konrad the first time. He can find that room again.

It's all sand and broken glass. Konrad must have lain here for months; no one's dared disturb this place besides Walker. 

All that happened, and all for what? This is the real Konrad, not the phantom Walker dredged up and blamed for his own missteps. There's a void where all his rage should be and something else is creeping in. He never should have come back here.

As an afterthought he lifts the jacket from Konrad's body. He'll try to call it a trophy. It's stiff with disuse and dried blood and as Walker slips it on he feels the weight, of time and distance and medals he does not deserve to wear. It reeks of death, just like everything else in this fucking city. He'll carry it with him all the same.

* * *

There's a heaviness in the air. It's an electric feeling that raises gooseflesh on his arms, like he's walking over someone's grave. Then again, he usually is. 

But this is something else, something that sends flickers of adrenaline through him. It's like the lull before a firefight. Then there's an old, familiar sound: the low rumble of thunder. He remembers nights spent in his childhood bedroom, curled up safe beneath his blankets while thunderstorms raged outside, only seeing their fury through glass. 

He's been in the desert for too long. He's almost surprised when the clouds bring water instead of dust and scouring winds. Lightning flashes above him as the downpour starts.

Rain. It feels like benediction on his skin. The water runs over him, carrying ashes and blood away in rivulets. Walker stands, arms out, as the water runs through his outstretched fingers. It's the purest water he's ever known, so sweet it tastes as if it's fallen straight from Heaven. He cranes his neck upwards and only then does he realize the truth.

The refugees died crying out for water. This rain was meant for them. It might have bought them time, if not salvation. It came too late. Instead it's falling on him and him alone, offering him nothing but a few more days of life.

This is not absolution, not for him. A tidal wave wouldn't wash Dubai clean of all the sins committed on its streets, not while Walker stands here.

The moment passes and it's only water again. He's unchanged, alone, and painfully aware that a little rain will not cleanse what lies beneath his skin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've had this fic sitting unfinished on my hard drive for about eight months now. I wrote it partly as an exercise for myself, and partly as a way to deal with some very Complicated Feelings. I don't think I'll ever really consider it finished, but it seemed like a shame to just let it sit there.


	4. The Dead Land

The Army was not something he chose. It was something he'd drifted into during the awkward liminal period between high school and the bleak prospect of grownup life. Mom was pleased to see him finally applying himself. Dad thought it would teach him discipline. Neither of them really thought he'd stay there. But he'd stayed, because for the first time in his life he'd found somewhere he fit. 

Shit went wrong but you didn't even think about it; whoever was in command did that, made the judgement calls, took the blame. You followed your goddamn orders and you didn't worry about what followed. Or you tried not to. With the Army Rangers he'd hunted drug lords in the jungles of Colombia. He'd been so damned proud of himself when Delta Force finally accepted him.

Then Kabul happened.

The lulls between firefights. The Damned, back when they were human; Walker tried to remember their faces and wondered how many of the men he'd shared a joke or a cigarette with had ended up dead by his hand. Konrad, the calm centre of it all.

Every day brought a new horror; he thought he'd seen every atrocity humans could inflict on each other and would not, until much later, come close to understanding why anyone could do such things.

Then the end of everything. Bleeding out on the sand, the cries of the dying in his ears. 

They say that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. For him, it hadn't. He remembers that hollow feeling, of blood and life and memory all leaking from his broken shell of a body. Too weak to do anything but lie there, eyes closed, alone with the fading sounds of his own heartbeat and the whisper of his ragged breath. There was nothing else but pain. 

They say that there's a sense of freedom when the end is near, that in the face of oblivion you surrender to the inevitability of death or even welcome it. Walker thought he had. Somehow he'd found his voice long enough to cry for help, or whimper for it at least. And someone had heard.

Colonel Konrad saved him, pulled him out of that ruin, and dragged him to an evac chopper. Or so Walker had been told afterwards. He thought he'd died, faded away into the black void of whatever lies beyond this life.

After that? Endless days spent lying in a hospital bed, unconscious or barely conscious, floating in a pool of morphine. Bones and flesh heal in time, leaving scars as silent reminders of what he'd endured, what he'd survived. 

The hospital staff told him he was lucky to be alive. Konrad told him that men like them were too stubborn to stay dead. Walker tried to tell himself he'd come back stronger.

* * *

Walker never told anyone that in his darkest moments he's still in Kabul, waiting for the end. He's had bad nights, awful nights, nights he's wanted to put a gun to his head and blow the memories out of it. It's not a feeling that ever really goes away. He can fight it to a stalemate; beneath it, always, is the fear that one day he'll run out of reasons to keep going. More than ever, he feels like he's standing on the edge, trying to convince himself not to jump.

* * *

Once, Dubai was just a big, gaudy playground for those with more money than sense. Underwater hotels, ski slopes in the middle of the desert, caviar and gold leaf on ice cream sundaes. All swept away by the storms, and when Walker looks at what's left it's hard to believe that any of that could ever be restored. This desolation will never be a city again.

Never in recorded history has a sandstorm lasted for six months. Never had an entire city been sealed off by anything resembling what Lugo had once referred to as "the Great Wall of Fuck You". There are all manner of conspiracy theories, of course. HAARP. Climate change. Aliens. Gamma ray bursts. There's an inexplicably popular documentary on YouTube crawling with phrases like "convergence of ley lines" and "Earth's harmonic resonance". Out on the fringes are the theories that Dubai was "New Nineveh", its denizens punished by God after failing to repent for their wickedness and decadence.

All of it was absurd bordering on nonsensical, or so Walker had thought. Give the world a mystery, and everyone will find or manufacture their own explanation. Actually being here hasn't done a lot to clear up the situation. If anything, he has more questions and precious few answers.

* * *

Sand deceives. It shifts under his feet, buries familiar landmarks, and exposes strange new ones. With no warning, what appeared to be solid ground gives way to freefall. When he reaches out for a handhold, anything to keep himself from falling, his fingers close on empty air. Bad luck, he thinks, that he stepped in the wrong place. At least there is no one left to see him stumble.

Sand sings. It's just the rustle of wind on restless sand and he knows this. But in the silence it sounds like murmurs and whispers, and if he listens closely he can almost make out their words. The wind carries with it a faint scent, like the last wisp of smoke from a fire that burned out long ago. He can feel its heat brush against his skin.

* * *

The storms don't stop. If anything, they're worse now. "Shelter" is at least three walls solid enough to keep the wind out. During the worst storms he finds an intact building and heads as deep inside as he can. It keeps the sand off him but he never feels any safer. He can still hear the wind. No matter how solid he thinks these walls are he can still hear the structure groaning, as if it resents his intrusion and is ready to give way just to bury him at last. 

* * *

Dubai will claim him if he lets it. Deprived of food and water, he might last a day. But his body demands sustenance and his mind demands action. Something as small as the feel of water on his lips is enough to ground him. He raids the Damned's supply caches; after all, no one else will need them now. He's had survival training. He can coax enough water from the desert to keep himself alive, if only barely. He's still breathing. He tries to convince himself that's some kind of victory, although he's not sure who or what he's fighting now.

He spends as much time in motion as he can. Stillness and silence are the enemy. When he pokes through the ruins for supplies or signs that anyone else is still alive, he can pretend he's accomplishing something. Otherwise, his mind wanders into places he is not yet prepared to go. Analyzing the situation is like being in the storm again, trying to examine it one grain of sand at a time while the wind tries to blow him off his feet. Right now he's just trying to stay alive.

He doesn't know what the fuck he's waiting for. Rescue? If anyone's come in after him yet, he hasn't seen them. The days pass, and he's long since lost count of how many. 

* * *

The UAE had declared Dubai a No Man's Land to deter looters. But right now nothing is valuable unless it keeps him alive. He'd found silver jewelry melted down for bullets. The refugees drank dirty water out of crystal. In Kabul he'd seen refugees craft playthings from scavenged bits and pieces; here, he'd found a silk doll with diamonds for eyes. 

He finds stashes of the things the Damned considered valuable enough to hide away. Cigarettes. Porn. Booze. Or, more often, brown residue clinging to broken glass. Near what's left of the Radioman's broadcast tower, intact baggies of something green and vaguely familiar. One sniff confirms an awful lot.

There's precious little comfort left in Dubai but he'll take what he can get. When he drinks he feels like a tired cliche, the broken soldier trying to drown his pain. The cigarettes never last as long as he wants them to. The alcohol just makes him clumsy and sluggish. It numbs him, but that's all.

* * *

The Gate. It's there every time he looks up at the skyline. When it's remote, off in the distance, he can pretend it's just another landmark. Twin headstones in a city-wide graveyard. 

He hadn't meant to come back. But the ruins are a labyrinth and it's easy to lose his way. Or maybe something was guiding him here all along.

_I thought we came here to save them._

The Gate is a scar burned into the face of the Earth. Even the ground under Walker's boots has been forever poisoned by what happened here. When he closes his eyes he can still see it. 

There is nothing left here for anyone now. Only the bodies of innocent people, their flesh seared black or blazing red, murdered by Konrad's arrogance. And the stench, of blood and smoke and terror and the alliaceous reek of white phosphorus. It clings to Walker too, so faintly that at times he thinks he's only imagining it. It clung to Adams and Lugo, before they were taken from him.

He stops. The Gate itself curves gently into the sky, and in its shadow Walker feels insignificant and utterly alone.

"We did what was necessary." "We didn't have a choice." He can feel the words clawing at him from inside, begging for release. But under that empty blue sky, he can't force himself to break the silence. His mere presence feels like desecration. He crosses it as quickly as he can bear to and tries to leave it behind. 

* * *

A mother sings her daughter one last lullaby, her voice lost to the roar of the flames. She holds her child as though love alone could ward off oblivion. 

Figures wreathed in fire reach their hands out to him. And where they touch him they latch on, holding him down and watching silently as his flesh blisters and melts away. He cannot meet their eyes.

He's waist-deep in a boiling river, choking on the coppery stench of blood.

He wakes. Walker is alone, and he screams until his throat is raw and bleeding. The nightmares come on him like storms: fierce and unrelenting, and they leave him with no option but to hide away until they pass. There's a mantra he uses to fill the silence. His life, in eight words.

_It wasn't my fault. We had no choice._

Walker huddles in the shadow of a broken wall, his knees pressed against his chest, his fists balled tight, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Outside, the wind is rising.

* * *

One day he catches a glimpse of his reflection in a dusty store window. He sees movement out of the corner of his eye and feels the familiar adrenaline rush. At first he's sure it's an enemy; a moment later, he isn't sure he was wrong.

The glass shows an echo of the soldier he was. He barely recognizes himself at first. He is scarred, badly, but he knew he had wounds that would never fully heal. It's not the scars that shock him. They're signs that mark the places where his weaknesses were cut or burned away. He tries to tell himself that what remains is stronger. That he endures, that what he sees now is what this city could not tear away from him. This is what's left after the storms were through.

It's the eyes. They glint like shards of blue ice, and the soul behind them is something so wild and feral that he can no longer name it as his own.

Walker puts his fist through the window. His hands shake as he tries to free the shards of glass embedded in his knuckles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The caviar ice cream sundae was initially something I made up as a joke, but it turns out [it's real.](https://www.instagram.com/p/w78NgpKizx/) It was just so bizarre that I had to work it into the fic somehow.


	5. Revenant

The winds are high today. Flying sand stings on his exposed skin. The glass walkway is slick underfoot; one wrong step and Walker could slide right off the edge. It's a long way down. 

Dubai's ruined beauty glitters in the fading light. He remembers seeing this for the first time; the buildings hemmed in by two walls of sand like some leviathan's great maw opened wide to swallow them all. If he listens closely, sometimes he can hear it growling.

"I would've loved this place when I was ten," says Lugo, looking out over the dead city. "Back when we all wanted to be treasure hunters and shit. It's like a lost city."

Walker blinks, but Lugo stubbornly remains where he is.

"You're- I _know_ you're dead. I buried you," says Walker. His voice is a rasp in his throat; he can't remember the last time he used it. "I thought I'd let you go." 

Although the corpse he'd buried bore little resemblance to the man sitting beside him now. Lugo looks as whole and healthy as he's ever been. Maybe more.

"I missed you too," says Lugo, rubbing the back of his neck. "Thought you'd appreciate the company."

"Doesn't anyone stay dead in this fuckin' city?" Walker mutters, taking a seat beside him. Though, if he's being honest with himself, he's only surprised that Lugo's re-appearance has taken this long.

"You can't get rid of me that easy," Lugo says. He's seated on the edge of nothingness, his legs dangling into the abyss beneath them. "C'mon, boss. I'll be good. No speeches. No guilt trips. You wouldn't listen anyway." He holds his hands palm out as if in surrender, and there is something so innocent and earnest in the gesture that Walker almost cracks a smile. Almost.

"You look like shit, boss," continues Lugo, appraising him with a look. "I'm diggin' the beard, though. Very hobo chic. It brings out that hollow look in your eyes."

"Yeah, I've been better." Walker shakes his head. "Why are you even here?"

"Because you can't let me go and you fuckin' know it." Lugo's head dips, the brim of his baseball cap hiding his eyes. "If you try hard enough you can still pretend that what happened to Adams wasn't your fault." Lugo's tone is conversational, but there's iron in the set of his jaw. "Not me."

"It wasn't my-" Walker stops himself just in time. Goddammit. "I thought you said 'no guilt trips'," he says, fighting a scowl.

"I lied." Lugo starts to say something else, but it just comes out as a sigh. "'Just enjoy the view, boss. You did come up here for the view, right?" Lugo closes his eyes. "People don't always stand on ledges because they want to jump. Sometimes all they want is someone to talk 'em down."

"But you're not here to talk me down," guesses Walker. At this point, Walker doubts that even his own subconscious would be that kind. Konrad had offered him redemption, and Walker answered with a bullet. 

"Me? Fuck no." Lugo chuckles. "You'd never jump. What you want is someone to shove you off the edge."

* * *

Walker's almost stopped seeing the bodies. It was a shock, at first, seeing so many men strung up like that. Now they're scenery. This one's just another dead soldier. His name, his history, and everything that ever made him human are lost to time and the relentless wind.

"You ever see someone get hanged?" asks Lugo. "Besides me?"

"Yeah." Back in Kabul he'd seen men and women strung up for minor infractions, or imagined crimes, or for no reason at all. "Looked like a fucking horrible way to die. They couldn't even scream."

"They did it wrong. Or maybe they didn't. Sometimes they just want to see someone suffer." Lugo taps the hanged man with his index finger, just hard enough to set him swaying. "It was so fuckin' quick. They just dropped me and that was it. I didn't even hear the snap. It was over, just like that. Guess I'm just lucky." Lugo shakes his head. "Fuck, do you know what they were gonna do to you?"

Walker tries not to remember but it's still too vivid. The blood-red sky. The voices screaming out for vengeance. And Lugo, lying there, staring up at nothing as his ribs snapped under Walker's desperate attempts to set blood pumping through a dead heart. He hadn't accepted Lugo's death then, had half-expected to hear Lugo stirring behind them as they walked away.

"These poor fucks? They went out the hard way," says Lugo, staring up at the corpse. 

"What does this city do to people?" asks Walker. Someone had made the call, decided that this was the only way to put down a mutiny. "They did this to their brothers, killed each other for the crime of wanting to go home again-"

"So what's your excuse?" Lugo eyes him. "No one's keeping you here."

"I've tried," says Walker. "This fucking city won't let me leave."

"And you actually believe that," says Lugo. He gestures in the general direction of the storm wall. "The door's right there. You're the one who locked it."

Walker closes his eyes. When he looks again he only sees one dead man, swinging gently in the breeze.

* * *

"I volunteered for this mission," says Walker. His lips are cracked and dry. When he speaks, he tastes blood. "Because of Konrad. He saved my life and I thought I was repaying the favour."

It was vain and he knew it. They'd march in and snatch the Damned from the jaws of death, and save what was left of the city to boot.

"And it never occurred to you that he might be a little dead?" asks Lugo. "Is that why you brought us here? You wanted to join him?"

Walker looks at Lugo and wonders whether he's seeing a ghost or a sick mind painting the familiar on a canvas of empty air. He no longer cares. 

"I asked for you," Walker continues. "You were supposed to be the best. We needed someone to track the distress signal and-"

"And I was pissed," says Lugo, but there's something bright in his voice. Too bright. "I thought you were just throwin' softballs to the new guy. City was supposed to be empty and I thought you were just taking us on a hike through the fuckin' desert. But I followed orders like a good little soldier, right to the end. Until you told me to run right into the arms of those refugees."

It was a goddamn refugee camp, a place of safety, and the bitter irony of sending Lugo there to die still stings. It was not the biggest mistake Walker made, but it's up there. He assumed the refugees wouldn't be hostile to the invaders who killed their defenders and destroyed their water supply. He'd assumed too much.

Lugo had described it as a quick death. One little snap and then darkness. Walker can only hope he'll be that lucky. It's a mercy he doesn't deserve.

"Those assholes beat the shit out of me." Lugo's voice is shading darker; even he can't play off his own death as a joke forever. "The last thing I saw was you and Adams trying to play cavalry. At least Adams got to go out in a blaze of glory. I got strung up like a fuckin' animal."

"How the fuck did everything go so wrong? None of this was supposed to happen." Walker's head sags. "It should have been so easy."

"It should have been," echoes Lugo. "Just walk in, rescue the Damned 33rd, come home as heroes. But you never wanted this to be easy. It's all about you, right? You didn't give a shit about the mission. You dragged us through Hell hoping that we'd find something you couldn't fuck up. You thought you'd trip over a way to fix everything. Took you long enough to fuckin' realize it."

Walker wants to snap at him: "It wasn't my fault", "We had no choice", "We did what was necessary". But the words are hollow now, empty syllables rendered meaningless through endless repetition. They were always the weakest of shields and they won't protect him now.

At his feet are a pair of makeshift crosses, half buried in the sand, that mark nameless graves. Two out of millions. 

"Lugo...I'm sorry." Walker's throat tightens like it's trying to trap his words inside. The confession claws at him, begging for release. "God, I fucked up. I fucked up everything. I killed you, I killed Adams, I ordered you to murder innocent people at the Gate-" He could go on forever.

Walker can't help feeling selfish; it's less an admission of guilt than a plea for forgiveness. Some things can't be granted unless they're asked for. But it's out there now, the closest thing he can manage to an actual confession. It'll have to do. Forgiveness might ease a wound but it won't erase the scars inflicted. Nothing will.

Lugo eyes him for a long moment, his lips pressed into a tight line. Then his expression softens, just a bit. "Okay," he says. "Now what?"

"Hadn't planned that far ahead."

"I tell you it's okay, you're forgiven, we kiss, everything's wonderful?" Lugo looks away. "Because I'm not going to."

"Didn't think you would," says Walker. "I just needed to say it." 

"Do you feel better, at least?"

"Not really." He's still a murderer. Still stranded in a dead city. "I- Fuck. I'm _trying_. Does that count for anything?"

"Honestly? Not a whole lot. You're pretty far past the point of forgiveness, if that's what you're after. You want my advice?" Lugo lays his hands on Walker's shoulders and meets his eyes, unblinking. 

Walker reaches up to brush Lugo's hands and feels only what he'd half-expected; solid bone and muscles under skin warmed by more than just the sun. Lugo feels more solid than the sand underneath Walker's feet.

"You make everything so fuckin' complicated," says Lugo, quietly. His grasp tightens just a bit. "And it doesn't need to be. It's easier on this side. It's over. Let it end."

"Nothing's that easy." Not for him. 

"It could be." Lugo leans in close, close enough that Walker can feel Lugo's breath on what's left of his right ear. "I'm tryin' to be the angel on your shoulder here. Really, boss. I'm just trying to help. And all I'm saying is, if you can't live with the shit you've done, you don't have to."

It's like being stabbed with a blunted knife; file the edges down as far as you like, but it still hurts. He's heard similar murmurs in the back of his mind. Hearing it out in the open like this is something else entirely.

"After everything, you still think it's all about you. Part of you always knew this was a one-way trip." Lugo shrugs. "Just saying, you already killed off most of the city. Might as well pick up the spare."

"Asshole," says Walker, and his own voice sounds like the rasp of wind over dry sand.

But he's talking to himself again. Lugo is gone.

* * *

This was someone's pool once. Now it's a crater in the ground, half-filled with sand and broken tiles. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine sparkling blue water and laughter. There's only him and silence and the setting sun. The air is utterly still; he's grown accustomed to the constant wind and the lack of it is stifling.

It's deeper than exhaustion. He aches to his very bones. The cigarette feels like a lead weight in his fingers as his knuckles brush against sand. But he lifts it to his mouth again and breathes it in. 

The outside world feels distant. Remote. Like another man's memories, or echoes of another lifetime. Shadows of a man too stubborn to realize he's already dead.

He feels liquid. Molten. Ready to flow away and into anything that might give him form or purpose. When he stands on rooftops now he no longer feels as though he's slipping. He feels like they're crumbling underneath his feet.

It's utterly perverse, that breathing smoke should bring any comfort to him after he condemned so many to die choking on white phosphorus fumes. But he takes another drag off the ragged cigarette, holds it in, exhales grey smoke towards the setting sun. The sparks rain down gently, like fireflies settling onto the sand. He lets it burn down to the filter until it stings his fingers, then lights another. 

Walker tries to imagine the people who used to live here, wonders if they'd recognize the place they once called home. He wonders if they were at the Gate that day.


	6. The Storm

When it comes at all, sleep is a dreamless nothing that robs hours and leaves him wincing at the dawn. The wind's carried more sand through the broken windows, and a thin layer lies over him like a shroud. He rises feeling like the mummy in some horror movie; all dried out, with creaking joints and millennia of dust streaming off him. 

* * *

The ravens are all gone now. They must have tired of pecking rock-hard flesh from the desiccated bodies lining Dubai's streets. When Walker looks on those bodies now he sees himself among them. There's an echo of his own features on every ruined face. When he turns away he can still feel them staring.

* * *

Konrad was right all along. Konrad, who chose death over living with his failure. Walker's been wreaking havoc on this city since the moment he arrived, like the storm made human. There is no redemption for what he's done. No one's going to save him. No one's left to force a gun to his head, either.

Once, Walker did not doubt himself. Once, he did what he deemed necessary without thinking of the consequences. But doubt has bitten him and its venom paralyzes. Now that the path is clear, he questions himself.

There is nothing left for him outside Dubai. He's a deserter and a war criminal. He can never be a soldier again. They will execute him for what he's done, strap him down and drip poison into his veins until he sleeps forever. But at least he'll sleep.

Walker looks up at the Tower and remembers when he'd stood in Konrad's penthouse, when he'd abandoned the last of his team to shoot a dead man and call it victory. He'd waded through miles of blood and sand to hear a dead man tell him what he should have, what he _must have_ known all along on some subconscious level. Walker had burned so brightly then. If his survival was a torch raised in defiance of the night then he is burning down to smoke and ashes, and the afterglow is fading.

If he leaves, if the storm allows him to leave, he'll still carry with him the weight of what he's done. The bodies, that burned then and burn still behind his closed eyes. The knowledge that he'd known all along what he was doing but pretended he was powerless to stop it, that he was only carrying out the inevitable. The weight of that atrocity broke Konrad. It shattered Walker.

But Konrad is gone now, truly gone, and not even an echo of him remains. There's only Walker, the dead city, and the storms.

* * *

The storm's both his jailor and his cage. It is always watching him, judging him like the eyes of God. He can hear it as a whisper in the distance even on clear days. Its breath burns hot on the back of his neck when it pounces, roaring in his ears. It's hunting him. At the very least, it's circling like a vulture, waiting for him to fall so it can devour him down to the bones. 

* * *

The end should be swift. A clean kill, quick as a snapped neck or a bullet to the head. Force applied with precision and intention. Not lingering, like the slow trickle of blood into sand. Not this "waiting around to die" bullshit. This has gone on long enough. 

He can hear it. He can always hear it. The storm, the other predator haunting Dubai. He can see it coming for him now, a wall of wind and fury closing in for the kill.

Fuck it. If the storm wants him, it can have him.

* * *

The first steps are the easiest, with the tempest ahead and still air at his back. Walker doesn't flinch until the storm winds hit him. This was a mistake; he's thrown himself into the beast's mouth and he's acutely aware of how vulnerable he is. One man against the storm that devoured a city. 

He's half scar tissue now, almost insensate to the desert winds. His sins weren't burned away; they're part of him now, deeper than this tattered skin he wears, deeper than sense or reason. The truth's no longer undeniable and the lie he created won't protect him anymore. He can't deny what's right in front of him. He's stronger than that. 

He stands, soul bared to the storm, teeth clenched until his jaw aches from the strain of it. The wind screams in his ears. Sand scrapes against his outstretched palms, biting down until it draws blood, burrowing into the heart of him. That wind carves scars into solid walls; it'll scour his flesh away, wear his bones to dust, and scatter what's left of him across the trackless desert. 

This is it. The pain's an afterthought, a temporary annoyance. The wind's pushed him to his knees. He feels nothing, no doubt, no fear. He's ready. His dissolution is at hand. He can see it now; he's half-buried, still struggling to draw one last breath into lungs choked with sand. And no one's left to save him. For a heartbeat he feels like the calm centre of that tempest, and he welcomes what's coming.

_No._

He's ready but for the tiny, stubborn part of him that digs in its heels and stands strong against the wind. 

_Not like this._

All he has left is the breath in his lungs and the heart beating in his chest, and he's fought too hard to surrender them so easily. 

All along, some unyielding part of him has refused to bend, refused to lie down and admit defeat. Once, it led him and his men into damnation. Walker clings to it now, praying it can keep him alive for just one more heartbeat. Captain Walker will not lie down and die. His life's the one thing left to him and if this is his death, he'll die fighting.

* * *

Shelter. He needs shelter. He's nearly blind in the storm but if he keeps moving forward, he might find safety before he's too dead to need it. There's nothing, only air made heavy with sand. Still he continues, one hard-won step at a time.

His hands brush something solid. He half-dives, half-collapses through a shattered window and lands face-first in a pile of sand. At first he barely notices the way it scrapes on his abraded skin. He lies there for a moment, tasting the still air. Still aching, Walker pulls himself to his knees and rests his head in his hands.

The storm does not abate. It only grows stronger and the walls he's hiding in threaten to buckle under the sheer force of the wind. This time, he doesn't see the sun for days. Without food or water, he's withering. Of course; it couldn't kill him itself, so it's trying to starve him out. So be it.

He paces because there's nothing else to do. He wears a trail through the sand from wall to wall amd back again while the storm calls to him through the cracks.

* * *

He only knows it's over when the wind grows silent. He steps into the empty street beneath towers that gleam bone-white in the moonlight. The stars peer down dispassionately. Walker's the last survivor, but only because he's too stubborn to die. Everything feels cold and mechanical now. He's an automaton going through the motions of life, some fabrication of wires and rusted gears that could never be mistaken for a human.

This is a reprieve and nothing more. It's his obdurate insistence that living for one more day, or for one more hour, is any kind of victory. His will is eroding. Dubai will be empty at last and the lonely storm will howl on through its desolate streets, heard by no one.

But not yet. Not yet.


	7. Goodbye

There's a glare of white, sunlight on glass. Walker sees the dust clouds before he sees the vehicles themselves. Even from this distance he can tell they're military, American, and headed in his direction. There's something purposeful about their progress. This is not some blind poke into the dark. They're searching for something.

They're here to rescue him. He can finally go home. It's too easy. This is cruel of him, cruel of his subconscious to dream up such a tidy way out- 

No. _No._ That entire line of thought can go fuck itself. If this is a real search team then Walker can't ignore them. If he does, he'll die knowing they might have been the last living human beings he saw. Somewhere, deep inside his withered heart, he might even want to be rescued. It's an unfamiliar feeling. Almost like hope.

They're going to find him anyway so he should make it easy for them. The Tower isn't far from and it's the most obvious landmark. They can't miss it.

* * *

"Commander, this is Falcon-1. I think we found him."

* * *

They're on him now, lined up in the sunlight like a firing squad. 

Walker sits patiently and waits for them. Cradled in his lap is a AA-12 stamped with the Damned's insignia. It's heavy and solid in his hands. "Captain Walker", they call him. He had a mission once. A team. They're gone now, taken from him or freely sacrificed for what he thought was a higher purpose. There might be enough left of him to crawl out of this hellhole.

"Look at his eyes. Something's not right." They're studying him now, warily, like hunters staring down a tiger. 

They've been through this city, they must have seen what it does to people. What it did to men who thought themselves good. And whatever Walker is now, whatever he's become or always denied he was, he's an unknown quantity and he's holding a weapon. 

Part of him insists that he can't inflict himself on the world, not again. Someone has to make a judgement call. Maybe it's over. And maybe Walker has time to make one last mistake. 

"He's shell-shocked. Give him a second," says their leader, calm and steady and doubtless well-meaning. He extends an open hand to Walker.

_He left himself open. Sloppy. He'd be dead before he knew what hit him-_

"Just hand me your weapon, Captain. We're here to take you home." 

* * *

The gun slips from Walker's fingers.

_It's over._

* * *

The sky above is a veil of clouds obscuring the sun. Dubai's already growing distant. It feels less like leaving and more like waking from a nightmare. His eyes are open, fixed on his unknowable black void of a future. Wherever he's going, it feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry it's taken so long to get this finished. The short version is that I didn't really have the time or energy to sit down and write, and when I did I just didn't make any progress. I abandon a lot of fics because I'm not sure what to do with them, or I run out of motivation, or something else happens. Actually finishing this one feels like a personal milestone. So, thank you very much for reading.


End file.
